Thursday, January 05, 2006

Writer's Corner - #1

What follows is a bit of fiction, written simply for the sake of writing it.

The notebook lay on the gouged tabletop, the smiley face that had been rubbed into the cover by an eraser leering at me. I opened the journal to a random place, and read:

On my way home from work today, I witnessed a grown man - at least thirty years old - picking his nose and eating it. He was cruising along in the middle lane, with his right hand at the twelve o'clock position and his left hand moving mechanically between his nose and his lips. Stab, stab, piiick; pop it in. Repeat. I don't think he even realized what he was doing.

As I passed him, he made eye contact with me, and I was too disgusted to try hiding my look of horror. I expected to see embarrassment in his features, but I saw only confusion. His finger never stopped working, even after I passed out of view.

This passage stirred the faintest of memories. The more I thought about it, the more confused I became. I know what I read (and what I supposedly wrote), but for the life of me the memory was of me being caught picking my nose by a stranger in a car. They say when you're crazy, you don't know it. I couldn't tell if I was crazy when I wrote in the journal, or if I was crazy now, while I was reading it.

Update: I decided to take out the writing that seemed forced and childish.